Yasin Malik goes on hunger strike against police crackdowns

Srinagar, December 21, 2014 (PPI-OT): In occupied Kashmir, the illegally-detained Chairman of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), Muhammad Yasin Malik has started hunger strike against the continued police crackdown on the residents of Maisuma and its adjacent localities in Srinagar.

“Police and forces have unleashed a reign of terror in Maisuma and adjacent areas. Nocturnal raids, arrests and other oppressive measures have made the life of its residents a hell. It seems that authorities are hell bent upon taking a revenge of election boycott from this locality. This state terrorism has forced me to go for an indefinite hunger strike from Sunday,” a JKLF spokesman in a statement quoted Muhammad Yasin Malik has having said.

“Police have resorted to oppressive tactics of 80s when they used to arrest fathers and mothers in place of their sons. The father of a political activist in Maisuma has been arrested and his whereabouts is not known. Police even locked his shop at Maisuma.

Nocturnal raids, cordons, search operations have become the order of the day and even people who were praying at a local Masjid were paraded forcefully. Many Maisuma boys including Ishfaq Hussain, Faisal Aslam and Aadil Ahmad who were arrested before elections were sent to STF camp where they were tortured and are still in custody with fractured legs and arms,” Malik deplored.

“The same police brutalities in 1987 pushed a generation to armed struggle and today when police is pushing non-violent peaceful political workers to the wall, it is actually promoting violence,” he added.

Meanwhile, JKLF leaders and activists staged a peaceful protest sit-in at Partap Park to express solidarity with the detainees in Kashmir. The JKLF leaders, including Noor Muhammad Kalwal while speaking on the occasion said, “The people who are sacrificing their youth in jails are our heroes.”